“Raise Your Weapon”

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Via Pitchfork

MP Williams provided A$AP Rocky with "Ghetto Symphony" for Long.Live.A$AP; for Bronx rapper Doley Bernays' "Raise Your Weapon", he samples deadmau5's power-ballad trance single of the same name, and he does something remarkable with it: by pitching down and looping the vocal hook and surrounding it with weepy keys and strings, he generates a blissed-out, free-floating vibe. But the drum programming is shrewd and tight, firing little counter-rhythms of snare clap and hi-hat into the empty space, and the beat keeps morphing, fading out in its last seconds into a parade of softly flashing lights like the Close Encounters ship in ascent.

It's a lovely, affecting piece of music that would be a calling card by itself, but Doley Bernays comes off just as memorably, digging into the track's surfaces, rapping fast and urgent in packed-close curlicues that recall O.D.-era Kendrick Lamar. He's a desperately personal writer, dragging his mother, grandmother, street corner, friends, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and his dreams and fears into three increasingly powerful verses.